Milieu of Milei

Ben Norton was on BadFaith podcast (here) talking about Argentinian fascism, which masquerades as libertarianism, but is in fact merely neoliberalism. People get all these things confused.

Neoliberalism enables fascism, but is not overt fascism (worship of the nation as sacred, usually with policies when in power enforced by ramped-up police.) Neoliberalism requires a police state and “security sate” for sustenance, but is not overt fascism, and often has fairly liberal doctrines such as gay rights, cosmopolitanism, and DEI policy.

Why does neoliberalism enable fascism? I should say “breeds fascism” — it is because austerity economics always breed discontents who are happy to see an authoritarian remove the austerity. (Usually utterly false hopes since fascists do not grok MMT either.) In fact, such malcontents are justified in their discontent, but too often they settle for the disgusting complacency and low expectations of merely wanting to hear the authoritarian say they will remove austerity.

Ben’s Dummy Neoclassicism

I will not stoop to calling Ben Norton a neoliberal, because that’d be dumb and counterproductive, but he does still use a lot of neooclassical economics framing in his supposedly progressive leftist stances. He constantly employs the “tax payer dollars” myth. Oh our hard earned tax-dollars going to fund this war here or there. It’s laughable. Those are government issue dollars, they can be used to pay taxes, but they are not the dollars of the tax-payer that are funding the wars.

Such “tax payer funded” mythology feeds the fascists and is right-wing talking point fodder. It is disgraceful.

I suspect Norton borrows (like a neoliberal with currency) his own thoughts on MMT from Michael Hudson. The trouble is Hudson does not fully grok MMT either. Hudson talks in terms of realpolitik, so he has the framing where people do think and believe tax-payer dollars are funding the government. This is true, people do think that, and it drives neoliberal policy.

But you, we, everyone who is honest, need to start talking about what is possible and what the true available policy space open to a government is, free from ideology. Because only then can we learn how no tax revenue is needed for free healthcare and affordable green state housing, and free education, and whatnot. The constraints are available real resources, not currency, not inflation.

Do not listen to Stephanie Kelton (but vote for her for POTUS if she runs). She will talk about the “inflation constraint” which is again false psychology, it is not pure MMT. An MMT understanding tells you the source of the price level, and thus also how to keep it stable. Inflation is not an economic concern for an MMT analysts, the real resources not being produced are the only purely macroeconomic concern. Inflation is a political false psychology concern, and so a real concern in today’s political climate, for sure (gets you voted out of office if you do not loosely control the price level). But we have to start talking about options beyond such false psychology in order to make progress.

I left these comments for BadFaith comments readers, LOL. First after Ben tried to explain why Argentina has hyper-inflation, starting with the lie that the USD is the “global reserve currency”. That’s the thesis of Hudson’s Superimperialism, but it is not because of Bretton-Woods, which died long ago, it is because of false psychology. Bretton-Woods died${}^\dagger$, but the psychology of fixed exchange rate mentality did not.

(${}^\dagger$Although it can still be found… in New Hampshire.)

No foreigner needs US dollars. That’s the reality, but they want US dollars. Not just to avoid forex fee costs LOL, but because of false psychology.

y comment:

@13:00 rubbish. (1) USD is not a global reserve currency, but from false psychology ppl still think it is, so have insatiable demand for it (for little good reason, there are higher interest rates around). (2) when a currency is pegged (to anything else, gold or another currency) you must promise to deliver that which you peg to as redemption, rather than just redemption for tax liabilities. Without strong exports you cannot deliver on this promise, so to maintain the peg you need to borrow in huge amounts, and promise higher and higher interest rates to keep the bond buyers happy. This is directly inflationary. Neoliberals think high interest rates are disinflationary, but as usual they’ve got the money story totally backwards. Central Bank rates hikes are one-to-one pro-inflationary if the ratio of propensities of savers to borrow and borrowers to save is about 1, which it typically is — higher CB rates just raise the forward prices and the own price, directly, not even a secondary market effect. Read up on MMT from Mosler & Mitchell, not Kelton.
   i) https://media.realvision.com/wp/20220309173133/A-Framework-for-the-Analysis-of-the-Price-Level-and-Inflation.pdf
   ii) https://moslereconomics.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/A-General-Analytical-Framework.pdf

Ben Norton is good on anti-fascism and geopolitics, but on macroeconomics he sucks — almost like a neoliberal — “our hard earned tax dollars!” LOL.

Wrong on Trade… again

Ben mentions the Argentinian “trade deficit”. They are getting more than they give.

My comment:

@13:00 trade deficits are a good thing Ben. Economics is the opposite of religion: it is better to receive than to give. The issue is they peg to the USD, so they have an export led growth model, the stupid model. Put the peso on a float, then you can have as many imports as foreigners are willing to sell. Exports are a real cost, not a real benefit, they are the price you pay for imports. The USA does not enjoy a trade deficit because of “global reserve currency status”. Little young New Zealand also enjoys a trade deficit, not that our neoliberal infested government recognizes this as a win for us – they are constantly trying to make us export more to foreigners, when we have people domestically who are living on the street and could use those kiwifruit and pine lumber goods.

Other comments on Liberal versus Libertarian

Someone in the comments section

There was a comment:

“Bad Faith interview with Denis Kucinich was really good. I didn’t know Milei wanted to put face recognizing cameras and banned protest. That’s not libertarian.”

I had to reply:

Correct, but it is what a libertarian must always do. Armchair libertarians notwithstanding. They have to choose between their policy options, because libertarianism is inconsistent with a government monopoly on the currency and law. But they can never do without a quasi-police state to enforce their policies. They inevitably choose the fashy elements that are anti-liberal because they prefer the (fake) “free market” — aka. rich get richer Pareto dynamics, aka. sell to the highest bidders (which is pro-inflationary, so… LOL)